January 26, 2011

Toby Harnden is the worst excuse for a journalist ever

I must have typed the above in title box of a dozen draft posts, sitting on the edge of darkness like a man with a bottle of brandy and a loaded pistol, but this time I’m doing it. I’m living the dream. Because…

So the celebrated DC wit and Washington Post columist Dana Milbank is boycotting Sarah Palin for the month of February, and encouraging everyone else to do the same. Here’s the case he makes. Well, it’s certainly true that there is a media obsession with Palin. It’s worth noting, though, that this is most pronounced on the Left. The Democrats want Palin (or Rush Limbaugh or Michelle Bachmann) to be the head of the Republican Party because they think that makes the party less palatable.

Certainly, Palin enjoys publicity. But she has been on the receiving end of some extremely nasty stuff, particularly Andrew Sullivan’s lunatic ravings about her son Trig’s parentage and, most recently, the blame laid at her door for the Tucson atrocity.

I’ve argued here before that Palin, for all her qualities, has made some serious mistakes and at this stage remains a flawed candidate for national office. That means she should not be obsessively covered by the media as if she were president. After all, she might well never run for the White House. At the same time, she has a significant following and a real contribution to make to her party and to the country. She deserves to be listened to.

So, rather than sneering fascination or a haughty boycott, how about a middle way in which what she does and what she says is reported on and analysed on its merits?

To this end, Telegraph Blogs has declared February “Sarah Palin Month”. Our US correspondents will cover the former Alaska governor throughout February in the fashion she deserves – and, moreover, other bloggers will make sure that Mrs Palin is mentioned every day, favourably or otherwise. I’m sure James Delingpole, for one, won’t need much encouragement.

I can just hear the collective snickering amongst his putrid co-bloggers, Nile Gardiner and the aforementioned Delingpole (confidential to Harnden, if you want lunatic rantings, you need look no further than your esteemed colleagues.)

But really, this is just pathetic. One guy, Dana Millbank is going to go through with this, but in Harnden’s usual faux homepsun logic about Real Reportin’ in Real ‘Murica, his response is to have a mention of her every fucking day. He conflates someone routinely mocked in the liberal blogosphere as the Dick Whisperer with the entire Washington press corps and the left.

So, expect many a wild-eyed missive about how she represents the true feelings of the flyover states, and somehow channels the founders’ true intentions or something because of her half term served as Governor of Alaska. Or something. Because as we all know, the founding fathers were all simpleton yokels.

I could write the length of War and Peace on the Harnden-Gardiner-Delingpole Triumvirate of Hackery as regards US politics, but really, what’s the point? Their strategy is to hurl so much intellectual fecal matter at the window of journalistic discourse that any attempt to clean it up results in one being covered in shit.

Seriously. Toby Harnden gets paid cash money to do this. It is his métier. The mind boggles.